Trends in Project management in 2023 – where are we going?

What project management trends will we see in areas such as resource planning, collaboration, methods, and tools? How will participants' roles in the project environment change? And what new challenges await the PMO?

The world has changed a lot in recent years, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, digitalization or climate change and even the war in Ukraine. It also has an impact on our professional world.

The shortage of experts is already greater than before COVID." A massive deficit for the future that presents us with new challenges.

This has an impact on the skills needed from employees – the famous skills of the future. Traditional skills:

·        Key digital skills

·        Technology skills

·        Transformational Competencies

Above all, we believe that the ability to solve problems is important, as is entrepreneurial behavior, initiative, resilience and creativity. And it is precisely these skills that will gain importance in the coming years, according to the survey.

Key digital skills are also increasingly being highlighted, as is agile working.

But what are the trends in project management that can be deduced from these developments?

Resource planning is becoming increasingly critical

Experience has clearly shown that resource planning in project management is becoming increasingly critical.

Project Management Office (PMO)

The PMO is increasingly taking over the coordination of resource management alongside team leaders and project managers. In collaboration with decision-makers, they must provide capacities with the proper skills and in this initiative-taking manner.

Team Leader

Team leaders are increasingly involved in the ongoing training of their team members. Employee training is obviously a means. Thus, it is important to keep these experts. Expanding their knowledge will not only strengthen their ties with the company but will also give them more satisfaction.

Project Manager

Project managers are increasingly engaged in finding solutions for clear goals and social skills. Traditionally, it was possible to set a clear goal at the time of commissioning the project. Nowadays, however, we are often unable to fully define this goal, making a different approach to the subject necessary. In addition, the steady increase in the number of projects means that the responsibility of project managers to take care of everything adequately has increased.

Team Members

To master all this, team members must manage ambiguity, lack of knowledge and deadlines. Indeed, the main reason for the failure of a project is the absence of goals or the inability to define them clearly.

Resource management must be comprehensive and adequate

Unfortunately, the resource situation is not improving in most sectors. Thus, the trend to optimize the workload of existing employees continues unabated. Managers will have to strive to make the unpredictable predictable.

To do this, they need to know what their people are working on – not only in projects but also in operations.

It will be impossible to avoid the involvement of team leaders in the coordination process between project management and operational management. Only by considering both perspectives will you get comprehensive and therefore reliable resource planning.

New needs for new projects and new areas of knowledge appear at shorter and shorter intervals. This needs to be more flexibly reflected in strategic capacity planning.

That's why PMOs and portfolio managers need even more support in planning for variable scenarios. Depending on priorities and availability in the short or medium term, they must decide which new projects to launch, and when. Some also need to be very flexible in postponing projects and adapting to new external circumstances.

Rough but comprehensive resource planning is more useful for this purpose than accurate planning for just projects. The "Complete and sufficient" approach is gaining acceptance.

Social and people skills for future project management

If you work in the project environment, you should consider some tips regarding social and people skills. They will help you prepare for future trends in an increasingly complex project environment and increasingly demanding resource management:

·        Have a human view of the term "resources"

·        Encourage creativity in the search for solutions

·        Allow unsuccessful trials and take them into consideration

·        Create trust as the basis for an honest assessment of circumstances and tasks

·        Make sure to limit uncertainties, sources of stress in projects

·        Create an environment where teams feel comfortable and won't want to leave

·        Overall, there's a trend that requires project managers to become (like) team leaders – "You can manage things, but you have to lead people." And why is this so?

·        

Knowledge sharing continues to expand

Surely you know the following problem: gurus, as a single source keeping their valuable knowledge to themselves, create bottlenecks in resource planning. If you have an insufficient number of skilled collaborators with similar knowledge to deploy over the same time interval, this will cause resource conflicts. The closer the skills of the available employees are, the easier it will be to assign them. This will automatically reduce conflicts.

However, this will only work if you actually share the knowledge. So, it is not the actual number of people that is the problem, but the bottlenecks for certain skills.

You can be faster on your own in the short term. But in the long run, it is together that you will go further. In agile environments, this mindset is the norm. Yet for most traditional organizational structures, this type of questioning is a major challenge.

The trend towards knowledge sharing is becoming more widespread, regardless of the sector of activity. As a trend in project management, it is increasingly manifested by the younger generation.

Agile and Hybrid methods continue to gain importance

In the traditional project management environment, we have seen the changing assignment of projects to different teams. However, this approach is becoming increasingly problematic. In the agile world, on the other hand, teams remain constant through iterations. They work together in the truest sense of the word to achieve actionable results.

The feasibility and scope of the expected results were estimated in advance by the agile teams themselves and divided into Sprints. This makes it much clearer what can actually be achieved and what cannot be achieved. It's common knowledge that:

·        Who can do what

·        What can be considered reliable

·        Which is rather uncertain

In addition, members of a homogeneous team who know each other well will find it much easier to share their knowledge.

More and more companies are adopting this approach successfully. Agile methods will therefore continue to grow in importance in the future.

Hybrid approaches to project implementation

In our fast-paced world, it is more important than ever to focus on usability, not specifications. With agile methods, the focus is on the final product from the beginning, the solution approach! However, the approach is open, and user-friendliness is regularly questioned. This can lead to a final product that is different from the original plan, but that everyone is happy with.

This agile approach, used in projects, prevents changed requirements from being ignored in development. In traditional project management, this can happen if circumstances change during the life of the project.

Project managers handle the benefits of the project result. The trend is definitely in the direction of being able to recognize earlier if one is completely off topic or if one brings a benefit.

Often, hybrid approaches combining the advantages of the agile and traditional world are the right solution for projects. The figure below shows the combination of traditional milestone planning with regular sprint planning. In this case, sprints should always supply results for the next milestone.

Remote working and hybrid work environments will continue

In recent years, a large portion of the workforce has switched to working from home. Others, however, regret the interaction with colleagues for example at the coffee machine or in the hallway.

A clear trend is appearing, which also applies to the project environment of the future: finding the right combination of remote and on-site work to meet and retain employees' wishes. This is where companies need to adapt.

Change management is becoming increasingly important

In the context of digitalization, organizational changes are often implemented in the form of projects. In this process, it often happens that something goes wrong. The implementation of a new software tool, for example, may not bring the desired benefits, as potential users have not been properly considered, prepared or accompanied.

For projects to be successful, it is essential to properly address the process of change in the organization, alongside the actual implementation of the content. This is the task of change management.

Depending on the scale of the changes and the number of people involved, taking charge of the change will be a task for the project manager. However, it is probably appropriate to involve change management specialists in this type of initiative.

This idea may not be new, but lately, people aren't just talking about it, they're acting on it. Change management is a key success factor for the projects of the future.

PMO becomes more strategic

The PMO is increasingly assuming responsibility for the implementation of strategic objectives. Organizationally, it is more helpful if the PMO is established as an executive department with direct access to the management of the company.

In this context, successful strategic ability planning requires an enterprise-wide overview of resources and good skills management. Finding and training the right resources is essential, as is their even more dynamic allocation to projects of strategic value.

As part of portfolio management, the PMO should now work more to abandon the weakest projects. Deliberately abandoning a project will free up resources in time for projects with higher priority.

The notion of "damage control" is not new, but it is particularly important in this context. It's a good idea to acknowledge failure at an early stage and take appropriate action before the damage escalates. This helps to support the cultural change needed in the future for successful project failure.

In the future, SMOs should prepare for the following changes:

·        Closer links with management

·        Don't just create standards and reports

·        More coordination in resource management

·        More involvement in portfolio management

·        Flexible use of project management methods

·        One-on-one support for project managers on traditional, agile, hybrid processes and methods to achieve the right combination

·        Lessons learned should be applied and continuous adjustments should be made in the methodology applied in your company.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned what project management trends we see emerging by 2023. We focused on the areas of resource planning, collaboration, roles, methods and tools.

In conclusion and to summarize:

·        Resource planning is becoming increasingly critical

·        Knowledge sharing continues to expand

·        Agile and hybrid methods continue to gain importance

·         Remote work and hybrid work environments will continue

·        Change management is becoming increasingly important

·        PMO becomes more strategic

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